Fifty-five million of
men and women were killed, not counting the wounded and the missing. Cities and
countries were thrown into turmoil and reduced to ruins; monuments rich in
history were devastated. In no earlier conflict had the civilian population ever
paid such a high toll in deaths.

Why did things come to the point where man himself and whole peoples
were brought so low?

Perché l'uomo stesso e interi
popoli sono caduti così in basso?

Peace is difficult, if not
impossible, between peoples and States,if in place of true love of country reigns a selfish nationalism, that
fuels hatred and envy, distrust and suspicion, competition and strife, the
desire for power and mastery in place of respect and protection for all rights,
including those of the weak and the small.

This is precisely what happened: it
was not difficult for leaders to induce the masses to make that fatal choice,
by spreading the myth of the superman, by applying racist or anti-Semitic
policies, by showing contempt for the lives of people considered useless
because they were sick or asocial, by religious persecution and political
discrimination, by the progressive stifling of all freedom through police
control and the psychological conditioning resulting from the unilateral use of
the media.

A number of wise statesmen - Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman,Altiero Spinelli - in Western Europe desired, precisely as a
result of reflection on the disasters caused by the Second World War, to forge
a common bond between their countries.

In 1965, Pope Paul VI, addressing the United Nations Organization,
asked: "Will the world ever come to change the selfish and bellicose
outlook that has spun such a great part of its history up to now?"